


coming for your heart, i want some revenge.

by planethotdog



Category: Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Rocky Horror Show - O'Brien
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Extended Scene, M/M, Rewritten Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 09:15:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17404172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/planethotdog/pseuds/planethotdog
Summary: kill your kings. march into their white sacred palaces and burn them.





	coming for your heart, i want some revenge.

He never looks more beautiful than when he is sad. With tears sparkling inside irises of hazel, they slip past his kohl-rimmed lash lines with nothing more than a breath of a hushed whimper. That agony, his inner turmoil, displayed upon the perfect canvas of his features sends icy pangs into Riff Raff’s clenching heart.

And he sings. Just as beautifully, if not more. Frank’s voice is trepid with an achingly sweet sorrow, carrying across the empty seats of the ballroom. It invokes empathy in everyone present – surely, its intended purpose – but Riff Raff feels the prince’s soulful notes in the marrow of his bones.

Because of his singing and the divine twists of melancholy within Frank’s smudged features, Riff Raff feels tears of his own prick at his eyes. Because of tremors in his hands, Riff Raff lowers the laser in his white-knuckled grip. Because of those tears streaking down his cheeks, Riff Raff reaches up to roughly wipe them away.

And it seems everyone _but_ Frank notices.

Magenta turns, with her body ever responsive to him, with the faintest hint of concern (and disbelief) in the wrinkle of her brow. Columbia allows her duty as spotlight operator to slip, her gaze cast to Riff Raff with an echo of confusion. The humans – Brad, Janet, Dr. Scott, and even Rocky, the whole lot of them – catch the small, quick movement.

All but Frank. Frank continues singing, bellowing and wailing about the troubles he’s faced. All while Riff Raff stands, bared and just as vulnerable, at the other end of the auditorium: forgotten _again_ , by the very man he came to imprison. The very man he’s laid down his pride for. The very man he’s taken whippings, beatings, and beratements for. The very man he’s loved from afar for all these years.

All too familiarly, the prince doesn’t even have the courtesy to notice.

He keeps singing the lyrics of his own torment, while Riff Raff is close to finishing the lifelong battle with his own twenty feet away.

Anger surges through him. How _dare_ he? How dare he have the audacity to continue treating him this way, with an antimatter beam pointed at his back? With Riff Raff’s index finger primed at the trigger?

In this anger, Riff Raff finds strength. It snakes up from his stomach and entwines itself into the veins of his arms. His digits curl around the cool Transylvanian metal in response.

As if on cue, Frank makes his way down the aisle, closer and closer to Riff Raff and Magenta. Still parading his sadness, his tears. No recognition in that of Riff Raff’s devotion.

And then, before he knows it, before the anger has cooled enough to allow for calmer heads to prevail, the song is over. Frank has stopped singing and appears to be accepting accolades from an invisible audience, while reality is entirely silent.

Magenta breaks the ice. “How sentimental.”

“And also presumptuous of you,” Riff Raff snides, quick on his sister’s heels. “You see, when I said _we_ were to return to Transylvania, I referred only to Magenta and myself.”

He feels Magenta’s stare, lacking surface emotion but underneath he understands: she is confused. They were only supposed to take him prisoner, but Riff Raff’s had a change of heart.

“I’m sorry, however, if you found my words misleading.” He’s lying through his teeth. “But you see, you are to remain here - in spirit, anyway.”

The look on Frank’s face is cherished. A cherry flavor of sweetness of his tongue as the prince _looks_ at him and is actually looking. There is but small understanding of Furter’s fate written upon his expression; him marked for death, and Riff Raff the executor.

Riff Raff approaches, slinking, with the laser trained carefully on his opposite. Pent up rage boils inside him, forces him forward. Forces his grip around the weapon to tighten.

“And now, Frank N. Furter, your time has come. Say goodbye to all this,” he doesn’t stop the crude, sinister smile that threatens to stretch dry lips, “and hello to _oblivion_.”

It’s then that Frank meets his gaze, truly. But in it are not the features of a man who will beg for mercy. There is that sparkle, that twinkle of mischief hidden within the blacks of irises that tease and taunt. Even with a laser between them, Frank understands he has the upper hand in this game.

It is neither an epiphany or a realization, Riff Raff understands. Frank has known the entire time. He has known exactly what he means to Riff, has been playing a _game_ with him the entire time.

He twists the knife, peppers salt in the open wound of Riff Raff’s bloody heart: “Do your worst, _inferior one_.”

An ugliness surges up into Riff Raff’s throat, clutching at his neck with cruel ferocity. It constricts his chest and he almost feels as though he can’t breathe, being looked at like that. Frank’s gaze challenges everything he has ever desired, and in his cruelty, a knowing glance that promises to take it all away in the same cut of his knife.

He readies the laser, and Frank basks in the glory of his audience; to die in such a way is exactly what he would want, surrounded by his objects of affection, in glorious beauty.

But Columbia screams before Riff Raff is quick enough on the trigger, and reflexes send a beam of red into her chest instead.

He watches with a determined detachedness as she crumbles to the floor.

But Frank - oh, Frank. It’s almost as if the doctor didn’t believe Riff Raff capable. A shocked whimper, a sound like a wounded moan, flees the smudged remains of carmine pout once Columbia’s body falls to the floor, the echo of his groupie’s life a hard, loud _thud_. Now, Riff Raff sees, realization strikes Frank: cold, and hard. He is going to die here, drowned in his own consequence, and nothing he can say or do will change that.

Such is further evidenced in the return of Riff Raff’s aim, focused, once again, on the breast of the Furter. Even as he begins to backtrack to the stage, as he stumbles over his heels and fumbles with the chiffon draping in his grasp.

Riff Raff follows, unblinking in stature.

They are the hunter and the hunted. A man who, at long last, is stalking his prey. A mewling animal, worth no more than the tears he’s begun to shed again.

Desperation clings to Frank’s features as he rears against the stage curtains, brokenly murmuring “no” over and over again.

There is a certain amount of pleasure Riff Raff feels thrumming, tight and hot, inside his core, as he watches Frank struggle with his mortality.

He thinks he enjoys the mask of Death, enjoys the role of executioner, of the hunter. Fingers are more confident in their clench around the weapon, as feelings of adoration dissipate.

Frank grasps wildly at the drapery, a last-ditch effort to save his own skin. The eye of the laser follows him upwards with ease.

Riff Raff realizes that he has been holding his breath. It curdles poisonously in the breaches of his throat, toxic in its captivity. His mind is burning: thoughts of rationality were being eaten up with little regard, until the withheld release of air is too much.

He exhales, and he pulls the trigger.


End file.
